Tech Tips and Tricks & Advice – written in plain English.

Restore This Vital Function In Windows 8 – Now

Enable Safe Boot Before You Need It (Or It’ll Be Too Late) (And You’ll Be Sorry)

If you have a computer running Microsoft’s ‘new’ Windows 8, I strongly recommend you take the following (quick and easy) action – promptly. Don’t dilly, or dally, do it now! Take it from a computer technician, you want to undo (one of) the incredibly stupid thing(s) Microsoft did to Windows 8 and, restore this advanced recovery and troubleshooting feature.

1) Press the Windows key + the X key to open the Start menu.

2) Click on Command Prompt (Admin),and answer “OK”/”Allow”/”Proceed”.

3) Type into the black command box the following string of text (below, in bold) mindful of the spaces. (Or, Copy>Paste)

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

4) Press Enter. After a moment, you should see the message “The operation completed successfully”.

Now you will be able to – in an emergency – press the F8 key to (try to) boot into Safe Mode and attempt repairs, should your computer fail to start up. (A feature of Windows since the beginning of Windows operating systems.)

5) Email this article to everyone you know who has a Windows 8 computer.

When something goes wrong with your computer, pressing F8 and booting into “Safe Mode” is sometimes the only way to fix the trouble — without resorting to wiping your operating system, and starting from scratch, and having to reinstall all your games and programs. You absolutely want the ability to do so, and the fact that Microsoft disabled it was just one more reason I do not like Windows 8, and refuse to have it on my machines.

I am very glad Greg Shultz posted the How To (to see his whole article, click here.) Now I wonder what else can be /set {default} legacy’d? Find enough of them, and Windows 8 might not be so bad…

Note: You might not ever use “Safe Mode”, or even know what it is, but the technician you hire will.

Rick,
I can count the number of times I’ve wanted to reboot into Safe Mode from Windows (already successfully booted). I cannot count the number of times F8 let me in to a non-booting machine. Totally asinine move on MS’s part, and I’m very glad I noticed Greg’s article.

Unfortunately.. how many people calling me for help are going to have done this? My guess is zero. I can hope Microsoft pushes it through an Update, or something..

Reblogged this on What's On My PC and commented:
Tech Paul at Tech – for Everyone (a computer tech by trade) is telling us to make this adjustment to help preserve our sanity with Windows 8. I can tell you Windows 8 is a great operating system; however, I am still trying to figure Microsoft’s thinking on some of the features added and removed in this version of Windows… Thanks Tech Paul for this heads-up! I know my readers (and visitors) will appreciate this.

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Miles Wolbe,
Yes.. I omitted that fact for a couple of reasons – mainly, to urge people to think about proactive steps, and to put some fire in the article.. But experience tells me that OEM’s no longer include an OS disc (preferring a recovery partition) and “the average computer user” won’t make a disc.. and if by some small miracle they do, they’ll lose it.

Thanks for your reply, Paul. Good point about the average user not having a Windows 8 boot disc. You might want to encourage them to make a recovery disc or download a free Windows 8 boot disc from Technet .

• About Tech Paul

I am a (semi)-Retired CompTIA Certified computer & network technician, and the owner of Aplus Computer Aid. I have been building/fixing networks and computers since Windows 95 was the new kid on the block.

I have regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here since 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers.) Sometimes I answer (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer is generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see is my own, typos and all. There is an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
You can write to me using this form.

Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.

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Folks, this is not one of those "trick you into buying" free scans, but a scan that show what is running, and loaded to run (Startup folder, etc.). You can also click links to learn more about the files it finds. And, please, do a search before you decide something doesn't belong.

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